The emergence of a ‘new middle’ or a group of people that are neither poor nor in all likelihood completely secure from poverty in many middle-income countries (MICs) raises a series of questions: Is this group really a new ‘middle class’? How is this group new or different from the established ‘middle class’ or the poor or rich (however defined)? What does the new group mean for understandings of societal stratification? In this paper we take the case of Indonesia in order to explore the characteristics of this new group that is evident in many MICs. We use 5 rounds of DHS household data for the period 1994-2012 to consider the evolution of societal stratification through transportation and other assets during economic development in Indonesia.

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Center for Economics and Development Studies is a research center under the Department of Economics, Padjadjaran University, Indonesia. A leading research institute in Indonesia in the area of economics and development studies.